What is Social Media Marketing?

This is the first in series of post about "Social Media Marketing" - we will cover the basic definition of social media marketing, how the media differs from the traditional media... that we are aware of & used extensively for marketing currently. In subsequent posts, we will understand the suitability of social media marketing for India market.


Wikipedia: “Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.”

Marketing has been inside-out (one way) approach – to broadcast the product message to the consumer with & expect the user to listen, consider purchase of the product. Social Media Marketing is use of media that is capable of two way communication, engage consumer in a dialogue, hear their review comments, spread your product message among their network – along with increase in product sales, you would also get feedback from consumers.

Traditional Media








Television, Radio, Print are the traditional media, currently used for marketing the products / services, characteristically it adopts the “law of few” (scarce resource) that leads the products / services to fight for limited media available to broadcast their message, pricing. Demand to Price elasticity is driven by the quality of the program on the media.

Social Media






Internet & Mobile Phones are the two main constituents of Social Media and it differs in availability of scale, does not have the problem of few, less elastic demand curve compared to traditional media. Specific / narrow target user social media channel can be found or created to market the product, a new channel creation has lower entry barrier.